Devil-Devil (19 page)

‘Your unfounded assumption of guilt has been worrying some of us in the Brotherhood for some time,' acknowledged the giant. ‘I had to come out this way, anyhow. When I heard that you had returned to Malaita, I made it my business to find you. You're a good man, Kella. You mustn't take the guilt of the whole island on your shoulders. Good luck, sergeant, and may your gods go with you, whoever they may be!'

It was still raining heavily when Kella reached the Ruvabi mission complex soon after eleven o'clock that morning. The students were all crammed into their classrooms and the compound was empty as the police sergeant crossed it. When he reached the mission house, Father Pierre was sitting in an old basket chair on the verandah, staring abstractedly at the downpour. Even the sight of Kella caused him only to nod wearily.

‘You're supposed to be on your way to Honiara,' Kella told him, stepping on to the partial shelter of the verandah. ‘I suppose you're waiting for a slow boat via China?'

‘That was the general idea,' admitted the priest. ‘Unfortunately the bishop has taken a hand. I'm ordered to fly from Auki to Honiara tomorrow. Anyway, what are you doing back here, Ben?'

‘I'm looking for whoever killed Lofty Herman, Senda Iabuli and Peter Oro. It wasn't necessarily the same person who did the three killings. In fact I'm sure of that. But I'm certain the deaths are connected somehow.'

‘Why come to me?'

‘Because I don't believe for a moment that you had anything to do with Lofty Herman's death. But I'm convinced that you know more about it than you're letting on.'

‘What makes you believe that?'

‘Remember, I'd been a pupil here before the war, and I know what you were like then. In those days not a parrot farted on this station without you knowing about it.'

‘Unlike now, you mean?' Calmly the priest waved aside the police sergeant's embarrassed protestations. ‘No, you're right, my boy. I've been here too long, and I've lost touch. I've got a lot more in common with Pazabosi than you might think. Two old men waiting for the end.'

‘How do you make that out?' asked Kella. ‘He's a crafty villain.'

‘He's still given his life to Malaita, just as I've given most of mine. And now, probably, all that he wants to do is to rest, like me. If he is fermenting an uprising, you can be assured that it is against his will. All we both want now is a little time to reflect on the past and prepare for the future. Unfortunately, such a period of autumn rest, the
trochea
, is built into the bushmen's religion, but not into mine.'

His words triggered off a warning at the back of Kella's mind, but he could not think what conclusion they were supposed to lead him to. Doggedly he pressed on with his questioning.

‘When did you last see Lofty Herman?' he asked.

‘It's all a bit vague in my mind,' shrugged the old priest. ‘As I told you, I was ill when the Japanese first came. I had a bad bout of malaria, and I had no idea what was going on at the mission for the best part of a month. By the time I'd recovered, Herman was no longer in the area. I assumed that he'd fled for his life from the Japanese. As it happened, they hardly touched Malaita, but Herman wasn't to know that most of the fighting was going to take place over on Guadalcanal. He wasn't the bravest of men, so I wasn't surprised when he disappeared. After all, he and I and John Deacon were the only white men on the island, and Deacon was making plans to sail his vessel over to Guadalcanal to help with the fighting.'

‘Why would Herman be so worried?' asked Kella.

‘He wasn't a particularly nice man,' said Father Pierre. ‘In fact, he was a drunken lout. He'd made a lot of enemies among the islanders. For years the islands had been controlled by white men like Herman. The invasion changed all that. Now, all over the Solomons, the whites were in a panic and it looked as if the Japanese were going to take their place. It was a very fraught situation; the established order was crumbling and everything was changing.'

‘What was Herman doing over here in the first place?'

‘Prospecting for gold along the river. He thought he'd found a large deposit at the base of the cliffs. He rigged up a strong hose pipe and trained it on the rocks to dislodge small particles, which he panned in the water as the river brought the rocks down with it.'

‘Where did this take place?'

‘On the Ulana river, half a mile west of the main track inland from Ruvabi.'

‘Did he find any gold?'

Father Pierre shrugged. ‘There were rumours that he'd been lucky, but if he was, nobody ever found his cache. Maybe his assistant made off with it. As I said, it was a pretty confused time in May of 1942.'

‘His assistant?' asked Kella sharply. ‘Who was working with him?'

‘It was Mendana Gau, that Santa Cruz man who owns the station trading store.'

‘Gau?' repeated Kella. More pieces of the jigsaw were somehow slotting into place. ‘Yes, I suppose he has been here a long time.'

‘Gau was little more than a labourer until the war. In fact, come to think of it, he disappeared from the district at about the same time that Herman did. But so did a lot of other frightened people, when they first saw the Japanese warships off the coast. Then, after the war, Gau reappeared. He seemed to have done quite well for himself in the interim. He certainly had sufficient money to open his store. But we never saw Lofty Herman again until that earthquake disturbed his grave.'

‘It must have been a heck of a tremor to roll back all the heavy rocks which had been over the top of his skeleton.'

‘No stronger than many others we've had here over the years,' said Father Pierre dismissively. ‘I could tell you about earthquakes—' He stopped himself and looked resignedly at Kella over his half-moon glasses. ‘You're not going to let go of any of this, are you?' he asked.

‘I've got my job to do,' said Kella.

‘Which job — as
aofia
or a policeman?'

‘A little of both, I fancy. So Herman and Gau worked the gold mine between them. Just the two of them?'

‘No, there were three,' said Father Pierre. ‘Didn't you know? Back then Herman was in partnership with John Deacon.'

‘Herman got around.'

‘He was quite unusual. I got to know him well before the war. He would drop into the mission for a drink and a chat from time to time. He was not a good man but he was a character. He had a fund of good stories and he knew how to tell them. He made me laugh. After he'd gone I missed him. I felt — still feel — responsible for his death.'

‘How could that be? Herman was a rolling stone. He was bound to get into trouble one day.'

‘I know. For a man of his experience Herman was curiously naive. He was always ready to link up with anyone who promised him a quick dollar. I worried when he went into partnership with Deacon and Gau. They were both much harder men. In any association Herman was always going to be the one who suffered. I should have warned him off.'

‘Would he have paid any attention to you?'

Father Pierre sighed and shook his head. ‘Probably not. All the same, I should have made more of an effort. But the war came, and then it was too late.'

After a few more words Kella left the old priest sitting hunched on the verandah with his memories, and crossed the mission towards Gau's trading store. As long as he had known the Santa Cruz man the storekeeper had been a crook. If the trader had been associated with Lofty Herman before the war, perhaps he was also a murderer. Herman and Gau could have fallen out over something, thought Kella, hurrying through the rain. The Santa Cruz man might have killed the Australian and buried his body. If Herman had discovered gold in the river, Gau might have murdered him for that. And where did Deacon fit into the equation? Could the Australian have stolen Herman's gold perhaps, and used it later to lease his plantation?

Then there was the matter of the man who had tried to kill Sister Conchita as they had fled across the swamp. The stalker had seemed to make heavy weather of the task, indicating that he was either handicapped or unaccustomed to strenuous activity. The pot-bellied, sedentary trader would certainly come into the second category, and so would the crippled Deacon.

But why would anyone want to kill the young nun? It looked very much as if Sister Conchita was in possession of information that would incriminate Gau, or someone else on the mission, even if she was not aware of what this was.

That was the hard part of the investigation, thought Kella. The fact that a white woman was involved put everything else out of kilter. If his investigation had concerned Melanesians alone, he would have had the custom knowledge to work out what had happened and what was likely to follow. For someone trained from childhood to assess and investigate traditional matters, everything should be assuming a logical pattern now, but it most emphatically was not.

The door of the trading store was open. Kella went inside. Two muscular Santa Cruz men in dirty shorts and singlets were sitting idly on the counter, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. They recognized Kella without apparent joy.

‘Where's Gau?' asked the sergeant.

‘We don't know,' said one of the men truculently. ‘Fuck off, black whiteman.'

Over the last five days Kella had been reprimanded, insulted, lied to and beaten up. With a certain grim satisfaction he realized that he had had enough. The Santa Cruz man standing before him became the unfortunate recipient of his wrath.

With his left hand Kella grabbed the startled man by the front of his tattered singlet. He brought his other hand across the man's face in a stinging slap.

The Santa Cruz man bellowed with rage, tore lose from Kella's grip, took a couple of paces backwards and then charged head down at the police sergeant. Kella sidestepped adroitly. As the man blundered headlong past him, the sergeant brought the edge of his hand down on the back of the islander's neck.

The Santa Cruz man fell heavily on to his hands and knees and remained there, shaking his head dazedly. Kella chose his spot and drove his foot into the man's side, sending him sprawling over on his back.

Kella glanced at the second man, who had not moved from his perch on the counter and was looking on in open-mouthed amazement.

‘You were about to tell me where Mendana Gau is,' suggested Kella.

The second man looked at his companion, who was still on the floor, holding his ribs and moaning softly. ‘The boss has taken some crates of tobacco to sell at the villages upriver,' said the second man quickly. ‘He left about an hour ago in the canoe with the outboard engine.'

‘I do hope you're not lying to me,' said Kella, leaving the hut.

Kella was on his way to the mouth of the river to borrow a canoe from a
wantok
, when he heard his name being called. Impatiently he turned, tensing, half-expecting with relish to see the two Santa Cruz men coming after him. Instead he found himself looking at a very large and very wet Brother John.

‘Did you get lost?' asked Kella.

The evangelist shook his head. ‘They didn't want me in the village,' he said. ‘The old man's dying all right. His daughter's a Christian and she sent for me, hoping that I could convert her father on his deathbed. He insists on dying the custom way. That's why he wants you.'

‘Why me?' asked Kella in surprise.

‘The old man wants the
tala oto
, the entry to the straight path, intoned over him before he goes. Apparently these days only you and two old custom priests still know how to pray in that way. The other two are a couple of days' walk away, so that leaves you.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Kella, brusquely, turning to continue on his way. ‘I don't have time. I have to find Gau before he gets too far upriver.'

Brother John walked round until he was standing in front of Kella. ‘I don't think you understand,' he said steadily. ‘You have been requested to give a dying man the blessing which will enable his spirit to leave the village and make its journey to the ghost island. He won't go my way, so he'll have to go yours. As the
aofia
you have a duty to help the old man on his way.'

‘But you don't believe any of that,' said Kella, trying to move round the obdurate form of the evangelist. ‘You're a Christian missionary.'

‘I am also a Melanesian, like you,' said Brother John, no longer so affable. ‘I believe that any man has a right to maintain his faith, and that all others have a responsibility to help him, no matter what their views.'

Kella hesitated. If he made a detour to see the dying man, Mendana Gau might get so far up the river that he would not find him for days, just when he felt that his investigation was approaching some sort of conclusion.

On the other hand, he had been called upon to perform the straight path ceremony, which would light the passage of an old man's soul from this life to the next. It was just another choice that he would have to make between being a policeman and the
aofia.
There had been so many of those over the past few years. He knew which path he would have to tread.

‘I'm on my way,' said the
aofia
, changing direction.

‘And don't worry about Gau,' called Brother John after him. ‘I know where you'll probably find him. He's got a supply of trading goods he keeps in a treehouse in a clearing just outside the village by the killing ground. If he's up in the bush, that's where he'll be. It's getting as crowded as Honiara up there these days.'

‘What do you mean?'

The big missionary shrugged. ‘The bushmen tell me that someone from Ruvabi mission was hanging around the tree-house a week or so ago.'

‘Peter Oro?'

‘They didn't know his name. Just fella bilong school.'

‘So Oro discovered the treehouse,' said Kella. ‘But why would the bush people kill him for that?'